Embodiments of the present disclosure relate generally to wireless networks for patient monitoring and, more particularly, to systems and methods for preventing loss of wireless sensor devices.
Real-time access to comprehensive patient information at the point of care facilitates early detection of deterioration of health of a patient, thus allowing for timely intervention and/or making informed clinical decisions. Accordingly, a patient care facility may employ a plurality of sensing devices that periodically determine physiological indicators such as respiration, heartbeat, blood pressure, oxygen saturation (SpO2), limb motion, and features of an electrocardiogram (ECG) for ascertaining the health of the patient.
Conventionally, the sensing devices are connected to the patient through wires, catheters, and/or tubing. However, use of the conventional wired sensing devices may hinder movement of the patient in and around a hospital room, while also restricting a caregiver's access to the patient. Furthermore, wired sensing devices may complicate provision of varying levels of patient care, for example, progressing from low-acuity monitoring at admission to high-acuity monitoring within a specialized care unit, to a lower-acuity monitoring until discharge. Such an evolving regime of patient care may entail recurrent addition and/or removal of sensing devices connected to the patient, thereby resulting in cable clutter and procedural delays caused by unnecessary time spent in cable and device management.
Use of wireless sensors operatively coupled to the patient to transmit patient information over a wireless network circumvents at least some of the issues associated with cable clutter and device management. Typical wireless sensors are small, lightweight, and are often body-worn to allow for enhanced ambulation of patients, while providing accurate measurements of physiological indicators to a designated patient monitoring system. Particularly, the wireless sensors may be configured to communicate with the designated patient monitoring system over a spectrum of bandwidths defined by an appropriate regulatory authority.
However, in absence of cables, a caregiver lacks visual cues associated with the cables to assure that the wireless sensors are appropriately connected and are communicating patient information only to the designated monitoring device. Furthermore, the small and lightweight wireless sensors may get lost within or outside the hospital room. For example, the wireless sensors may detach from the patient and may get lost during cleaning in a laundry chute, in the bathroom, under the bed, due to theft, or unintentional inventory movement. The absence of cables and the small size may delay detection of the loss of the wireless sensors, thus resulting in loss of patient information. Moreover, movement of lost wireless sensors, which are communicating over a shared radio frequency spectrum, may lead to undesirable interference with other wireless sensors or other radio systems in use within the hospital environment.
Accordingly, certain wireless patient monitoring systems employ tracking systems for locating wireless sensors. For example, some wireless systems may employ real-time locating system (RTLS), global positioning system (GPS), infrared (IR) units, and/or radio frequency identifier (RFID) technology for tracking and/or locating wireless devices. However, such conventional wireless tracking systems employ additional infrastructure and/or devices such as RFID tags and IR sensors to locate the wireless sensors. Alternatively, certain systems employ a telecommunications base station for locating the wireless sensors using a beacon signal and triangulation. In such systems, locations of the wireless sensors may be determined only at the RTLS system, the GPS device, and/or the base station. Furthermore, the conventional tracking systems may not allow a user to locate lost wireless sensors that have lost communication with corresponding GPS, RTLS, or central communications system.